I Like to Make You Smile
When Robin was in grade school...those first experiments with clowning around definitely weren't to distract the other foals and fledglings from asking why Robin never wore dresses or skirts, and seldom played with dolls. Why Robin liked to wear boy's shoes on formal day, and climb trees on other days.
It wasn't to distract from any of that.
Robin just liked to make creatures smile, that's all.
***
When Robin graduated from high school, and ran away to New Yoke City, it wasn't because Robin had heard that in the big city, there was more room for creatures to be different. That some there don't care so much about whether you're a boy or a girl.
Robin just thought, a city with millions of creatures? That's so many who might need some cheering up. A little pep talk, sandwiched between laughs, flavored with jokes.
That was why Robin went to New Yoke City.
***
When Robin arrived in the big city, Robin went from place to place, sometimes seeing the sights, but mostly watching the ponies, griffons, and other city dwellers. Robin found them very interesting indeed. Creatures were Robin's business. Making them smile, making them laugh, making them feel.
Soon, Robin was studying to become a mime, practicing in the park, splitting the audience's tips. Robin really committed to the bit. For more than a year, almost nocreature ever heard Robin's voice.
It wasn't because if Robin tried to speak, anycreature who heard Robin's voice might decide: boy, or girl.
Robin just really liked physical comedy. Wanted to concentrate on it for a while. Learning how to make ponies smile and laugh, even gasp or cry, without saying a single word, without even making a sound...that was just something Robin wanted to do.
No special reason for it.
***
Studying secretly, Robin worked hard at vocal training, sometimes with coaches and sometimes alone, by recording Robin's own voice and playing it back, again and again, until finally Robin felt ready to speak onstage.
It was so wonderful to finally speak again! Robin had worked so hard to be able to control vocal pitch, speed, timbre...nearly everything a voice can possibly become. Robin went wild, doing impersonations of different creatures, mares and stallions and foals, griffons and yaks and breezies, making up completely new characters even partway through a standup comedy show.
One night, Robin even made up a character who was: Robin impersonating an actor who is a stallion, who is doing funny voices to impersonate a mare who passes herself off as a housekeeper-nanny, so the stallion (hidden under two or three different layers of disguises) can spend time with his foals after a messy divorce.
Audiences loved it.
Years later, that ridiculous on the fly improvisation grew into a much loved movie. "Mrs. Doubtflare" sold hundreds of millions of tickets.
But Robin wasn't transgender. Robin was just a comedian who happened to also be an actor, who was good at doing different voices to make creatures laugh. That's all.
***
One summer, Robin wanted to march in a protest against a war. Maybe it doesn't really matter which war, unless you were around at the time.
Robin thought, I've been making creatures smile a lot. I've been making creatures laugh. I've even made audiences think, sometimes...but usually not while they laugh.
I've made creatures cry, by showing them a father who loves his foals but doesn't get to see them, in the full-length movie of "Mrs. Doubtflare."
Or by playing a schoolteacher who tells his students to find their true selves, to be genuine, live the way they want to live, tell the world who they really are. No artifice, no disguises.
That was "Dead Colt's Society."
In that movie, a well meaning teacher saw how for one colt, whose parents wouldn't or couldn't accept him for who he was...that whole plan to 'be yourself' went disastrously wrong.
Not funny at all. It just made a creature feel...'morose,' the teacher said.
But that colt didn't represent anything about Robin's own self. That colt was just...a character. A character played by a foal, not a full grown pony like Robin.
That colt didn't have anything to do with Robin at all, not really. They just happened to be in the same movie.
Robin thought about Robin's career trajectory so far. About what Robin had tried to do...met with huge successes, and also some small failures here and there.
The comedian-actor thought about when Robin was a foal (or a fledgling, as may be) in elementary school, trying to avoid being bullied for being different. Robin had learned jokes and clowning can protect somecreature...but only within limits. Go too far, and your protection might vanish.
Robin didn't speak at the protest rally. Robin didn't go to the protest at all. Robin didn't get beaten by counterprotestors, and Robin didn't get arrested. Robin didn't get stripped by the police, or by other attackers. Robin's body cavities were not searched and officially catalogued, in records any first year law student knows how to access.
Robin didn't have to find out what else some creatures might do when they had Robin stripped naked, when they had proof that Robin wasn't what they'd thought Robin was.
***
Instead of directly protesting the war, Robin thought about maybe making a sequel to "Good Morning, Whinny Nam!" That movie had been a comedy that revealed elements of tragedy (like more than one of Robin's movies, come to think of it.) A movie set in one of Equestria's past wars, "Whinny Nam" showed how war causes injustice and suffering, no matter what side you're on.
Robin had trouble getting the studio support Robin wanted, though, for the more hard-edged sequel the comedian-actor envisioned.
"Why can't you just be funny?" an executive said. "You were already touching a mighty thin line with your first war movie. You almost made Equestria look bad, and a lot of ponies don't like that. Why don't you do a film about a doctor who's also a clown? Medical dramas do well, and ponies love clowns."
That rebuff led to "Paint Adams," a film about how joy and laughter not only make life worth living, but also help ponies to stay alive at all. It did ok, Robin thought. The movie certainly pulled well at the box office, even if it wasn't quite the movie Robin had originally wanted to make. But with so many hundreds or thousands of creatures involved in any big Ponywood project, not to mention the studio management and all their meddling...no film ever did turn out exactly as Robin had hoped.
But they were still better than if Robin had made no movies at all.
***
Robin doesn't ask for much, not really.
Robin doesn't care whether you call Robin she, or he, or they.
Robin just hopes you'll smile when you say it.
Robin Whinnyams has learned not to ask for too much.